5 Iconic Traits of Fictional Characters (That Are B.S.)

#2. Daniel Desario in Freak and Geeks Isn't Either One of Those Things

The show Freaks and Geeks relies on an audience who already know people in their own lives who fit both of those epithets. Geeks are the nerdy types, freaks are the maladjusted kids peppered through every high school who miss class a lot and spend all their time doing drugs and each other. They are the outcasts, ridiculed and bullied by the popular kids in school just for being ambitionless, short-tempered products of broken homes.

But somehow they have approximately 4,000 percent less acne than any group of students at any real high school.

Now try watching the entire series again and let us know when you see a single example of that ridicule actually happening. We'll wait.

Why This Is Bullshit:

For a show that claims to concentrate on the lowest-rung losers of the high school social hierarchy, they sure aren't shy about making their main freak as handsome, charming and admirable as possible. James Franco plays Daniel Desario, who is less like the alienated slackers you remember from when you were a teenager and more like James Dean. Yes, he does all of the outlaw stuff that is supposed to make him an outcast, but it doesn't -- the show winds up portraying Daniel as hands down the coolest kid at William McKinley High School.

This kid never got pelted with pizza crusts for bringing his D&D books to school.

The main female character, Lindsay, even starts hanging out with the freaks primarily because she's attracted to him. She throws a party just to get an opportunity to hang with Daniel and is understandably bummed when he spends the duration of the party making out with his girlfriend instead. Daniel even juggles relationships between two best friends in one episode, and by the end, both girls still like him, but their friendship has been destroyed. In fact, his charisma and good looks allow him to manipulate people constantly toward his own ends. Sound like any other character you know?

The problem is that we don't get any context in the show for why he's designated as a "freak." There are no popular, rich kids bullying him, there are no star athletes slamming his head into lockers, he's not suffering any consequences for the way he is. In fact, the only bullying we ever see in the show comes from Daniel and his friends when they pick on the geeks. Throughout the entire series, the only things separating Daniel Desario from the popular quarterback cliche are a football and a nicer car.

Ah, doughnut-based bullying -- a staple of our high school years.

#1. Worf on Star Trek: The Next Generation Is a Terrible Warrior

Worf is the security officer aboard the USS Enterprise and its resident badass. He is a Klingon, which is a race that combines the rules and ethics of a samurai with those of Spartan warriors.

Their ancestral weapon is the most deliberately impractical sword ever designed.

Klingons are tough guys from birth, and trained in every form of savage combat imaginable. That's why Worf is tasked with protecting the more fragile members of the crew, even in an age when everybody has handheld weapons that can vaporize anyone they're pointed at.

Worf, seen here employing the ancient Klingon martial art of "grabbing people by the shirt and growling."

Why This Is Bullshit:

As you might expect, Worf gets into a lot of fights in The Next Generation, but he loses those fights with alarming regularity. It's surprising the Enterprise hasn't fired him out of pure embarrassment. By our count, he is portrayed as getting involved in over 20 serious fights through the run of the show. He loses about 75 percent of them. To give you some context, here's a compilation of him folding like paper in the face of confrontation:

The result of his losses varies from being knocked unconscious to nearly dying. In fact, Worf does die in the episode "Transfigurations," which was a special humiliation for him because the man who killed him did it accidentally, by pushing him off a walkway. You'd hope a man bred for battle would have a better center of balance (he was later revived, because this is sci-fi and nobody has to ever permanently die).

Worf has also been taken captive several times, occasionally by rogue members of his own crew, which means he's even losing fights to his co-workers aboard the Enterprise. Riker, Picard and even Deanna Troi, who has probably never fought a day in her life, all lay Worf out during the run of the show.

So just to clarify, Worf loses just as many fights to the people he's supposed to protect as he does to intergalactic punches. He's basically the alien equivalent of a campus security officer.